Because time and space play a similar role in wave propagation, wave control can be achieved or by manipulating spatial boundaries or by manipulating time boundaries. Here we emphasize the role of time boundaries manipulation. We show that sudden changes of the medium properties generate instant wave sources that emerge instantaneously from the entire wavefield and can be used to control wavefield and to revisit the holographic principles and the way to create time-reversed waves. Experimental demonstrations of this approach with water waves will be presented and the extension of this concept to acoustic and electromagnetic waves will be discussed. More sophisticated time manipulations can also be studied in order to extend the concept of photonic crystals and wave localization in the time domain.

Biography:

Mathias Fink is a professor of physics at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI ParisTech), Paris, France. In 1990 he founded the Laboratory Ondes et Acoustique at ESPCI that became in 2009 the Langevin Institute. In 2002, he was elected at the French Academy of Engineering, in 2003 at the French Academy of Science and in 2008 at the College de France on the Chair of Technological Innovation. He has received several scientific awards as the CNRS medal of innovation, the Rayleigh Award of the IEEE Ultrasonics Society (2012), the ERC SYNERGY Grant (European Research Council) for the HELMHOLTZ project (2013) and the Edwin H. Land Medal of the Optical Society of America (OSA), 2014

Mathias Fink’s area of research is concerned with the propagation of waves in complex media and the development of numerous instruments based on this basic research. His current research interests include time-reversal in physics, wave control in complex media, super-resolution, metamaterials, multiwave imaging, and telecommunications. He has developed different techniques in medical imaging (ultrafast ultrasonic imaging, transient elastography, supersonic shear imaging). He holds more than 70 patents, and he has published more than 400 peer reviewed papers and book chapters. 6 start-up companies with more than 300 employees have been created from his research (Echosens, Sensitive Object, Supersonic Imagine, Time Reversal Communications, CardiaWave and GreenerWave).